This Week in Arts: Wednesday Roundup (8/28)
Labor Day inserts itself this weekend, so it’s little surprise that it’s a pretty low-key weekend for theatre, and no show openings to report. It’s a great time to catch up on all those things you’ve been putting off — including seeing a few shows that come to an end this weekend. It’s also a great time to rest up, with a dozen (!!) or so openings steamrolling through over the next two weeks.
Closings
Closing this Saturday are Kiki’s Delivery Service (with a Saturday matinee as its final show) from Theatre Battery in Kent; and at night, The Neverborn from Annex Theatre (see NWT’s review here) and Lungs from Really Really Theatre Company. All three are imminently affordable: Theatre Battery offers free tickets to all; Really Really gives 20 free seats per show and sliding scale thereafter (note: all of those are claimed); and Annex offers a sliding scale that starts at $10 for all performances.
Short Runs & One-Offs
Wednesday
On the second of a two-night ode to Kittens in a Cage (the play-turned-movie by Kelleen Conway Blanchard), tonight Annex airs the sequel to the first movie, based on Blanchard’s play which Annex produced in 2012. The first play (and movie) followed sweet-girl inmate Junie, her shiv-toting religious mom, and all her cell block friends (and enemies). We can’t wait to see what they’re up to now. See NWT’s coverage here.
Thursday
The ceremony and celebration for the annual Mayor’s Arts Awards are Thursday night at the Seattle Children’s Museum. They’re free and open to the public, but make sure you RSVP here. Honorees this year are Intiman Theatre company, the Center of Contemporary Art, individual artists Delbert Richardson and Dani Tirrell, and arts reporter Marcie Sillman. See NWT’s coverage here.
Friday
Three Dollar Bill Cinema — Seattle’s queer film organization, and the ones responsible for the annual queer and trans film festivals in town — are showing Kinky Boots, the film that inspired the musical, at sundown at Cal Anderson Park. Admission is free; get the early for a good spot. Info here.
Friday/Saturday
The World’s Quickest Theatre Festival returns for its second weekend — and once again, somewhere around the region, playwrights will be up all night trying to put together a script. The next day, the artists paired with them by random drawing — actors, directors, and designers — will have a few hours to learn and stage the whole thing that night. And then they’ll do the whole process all over again the next night. It all sounds a little sado-masochistic — but that’s the fun (… ?) of The 14/48 Projects’ signature series. Over two weekends (last weekend and this one), dedicated viewers can watch 28 new short plays by 14 different playwrights. See NWT’s coverage here.
Sunday
Emmett Montgomery’s long-running variety show, Weird and Awesome with Emmett Montgomery, is Sunday night at Annex. Plus, check out Montgomery’s other recurring shows: Joketellers Union Comedy Showcase (every Wednesday night at the Clock-Out Lounge, co-hosted with Brett Hamil), and The Magic Hat (every Monday in the Grotto at the Rendezvous).
What Else?
Intiman Theatre (which will be recognized with a Mayor’s Arts Award this week) continues its run of Bulrusher at the Jones Playhouse, located just off the UW main campus. Carrying forward the theatre’s priority of theatre-for-all, tickets may be reserved in advance for a low price, but anyone walking up to the door may attend for free, as well.
Looking for a splurgey treat? Teatro ZinZanni’s Decadent Delights (which runs through 9/8) and the Can Can Culinary Cabaret’s The Legend of El Dorado (through 9/29) offer sass and dinner with your theatre. Those similarities aside, they’re two vastly different experiences. Teatro ZinZanni shows off international aerialists, illusionists, contortionists, a yodeling dominatrix, and more, with comedic drag artist/host Kevin Kent, all surrounded by an atmosphere of whimsy. The shows are held in a lavish traveling circus tent (the spiegeltent), out in the winery country of Woodinville. Its current show features comedic host vocalist Maiya Sykes (The Voice). The Can Can, meanwhile, is a seedier, non-kid-friendly romp by design, with high kicks, come-hither dances, and bare asses. But it, like ZinZanni, is an escape to another world: this one a packed-in underground nightclub, where men and women are objectified equally, on stage and with the audience’s hooting and hollering, and no one gets gross about it; all while the traffic of Pike Place travels by overhead.
Wednesday Roundup is a weekly (ish) feature, with NWT’s picks for the upcoming week and recaps around town.
Want to plan your show schedule further out? See what’s happening on NWT’s Calendar page, which aims to list just about every theatre show in town. And for news on all the openings each month see Miryam Gordon’s openings coverage here.